Will Ian Birrell (and other pundits) put their money where their mouths are?
Published:A Tory-Labour unity coalition might be the only way forward after the election – my piece for today’s @guardian https://t.co/yGoke9NaQz
— Ian Birrell (@ianbirrell) January 3, 2015
Ian Birrell isn’t the first person to float the idea of a Tory/Labour Grand Coalition emerging from a messy general election result. To be fair, he isn’t saying this is a probable or even very likely outcome; in fact it’s hard to guess just how plausible he thinks it is, beyond it being “possible to envisage”. Still, he’s taken up some space in a national newspaper to talk about it, so I’m guessing he must think there is more than, say, a 2% chance of it happening. So the 50/1 on offer from Ladbrokes must make it a good bet. I’ve asked him how much he’d like to stake at those odds:
@ianbirrell A Con/Lab coalition is 50/1. How much would you like on? pic.twitter.com/dxuYOv1UVx
— Ladbrokes Politics (@LadPolitics) January 3, 2015
No response yet – odds are he hasn’t seen it or doesn’t care. I think it would be a very good discipline for political pundits to back up their forecasts with cash and let us see how many of them could actually make any money out of their wisdom. Not many would be my guess.